Twenty-six children and adolescents who were unable to produce /r/ correctly listened to a tape of 200 words containing /r/ spoken, either correctly or incorrectly, by either the subjects themselves or another speaker. Subjects judged both the correctness of the /r/ and the speaker's identity. Results support a relationship between speech…

A study involving 27 families examined the relationship between attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and the risk to first-degree relatives. The 13 children with SLI and AD/HD had a significantly higher chance of having first-degree relatives with speech/language disorder than the 14…

This study, with white, African American, and Hispanic American kindergartners (n=105) found significant differences between groups on mean speaking fundamental frequency and speaking range. Hispanic children showed increased mean speaking fundamental frequencies in comparison to African American children and reduced speaking ranges compared to…

The influence of presurgical infant orthopedic treatment (PIO) on speech intelligibility was evaluated with 10 toddlers who used PIO during the first year of life and 10 who did not. Treated children were rated as exhibiting greater intelligibility, however, transcription data indicated there were not group differences in actual intelligibility.…

Five experiments involving 84 subjects investigated the effects of phonologic similarity of speech-production latencies to explore the role of articulatory phonetic features and reprogramming operations during pre-motor stages of production. Results revealed that shared manner was the most influential factor associated with the observed inhibitory…

Relative to both same-age peers and younger typically developing children with similar mean lengths of utterance, 15 Spanish-speaking preschool children with specific language impairment showed more limited use of several different grammatical morphemes. These limitations were most marked for noun-related morphemes such as adjective-agreement…

Many speakers with repaired cleft palate have reduced intelligibility, but there are limitations with current procedures for assessing intelligibility. The aim of this study was to construct a single-word intelligibility test for speakers with cleft palate. The test used a multiple-choice identification format, and was based on phonetic contrasts…

Background: Theoretical and empirical support now exists for the finding that many children with expressive phonological impairment experience problems in acquiring phonological awareness and early literacy skills. Few studies, however, have examined the long-term academic and literacy outcomes for this population, in particular as the…

Objective: To investigate parents' experiences of surveillance for early talking difficulties. Design: Qualitative study nested within a randomised controlled trial. Setting: Interviews with the parents of 20 children identified as having early difficulties. Results: Most parents were in favour of surveillance of children's language. Parents do…

A large percentage of patients who have undergone laryngectomy to treat advanced laryngeal cancer rely on an electrolarynx (EL) to communicate verbally. Although serviceable, EL speech is plagued by shortcomings in both sound quality and intelligibility. This study sought to better quantify the relative contributions of previously identified…

This research brief, the seventh in a series of National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) briefs, examines the presence of special health care needs among children in the child welfare system (CWS). It specifically examines the presence of chronic health conditions (e.g., asthma, diabetes) and special needs (e.g., emotional…

Background: Language impairment and delayed language onset have been described, although not investigated in detail, in children with 22q11 deletion syndrome. Aims: To investigate different areas of language: the ability to retell a narrative, phonology, syntax and receptive vocabulary in a group of 5-8-year-old children with 22q11 deletion…

Fifteen adults who reported a childhood history of speech-language and/or learning disability were tested on two verbal memory tasks. Their performance on sentence repetitions and reading span measures was compared to a control group. Results indicated statistically significant group performance differences on both short-term and working memory…

Comparison of the speech of 37 preschool children with speech-language impairment (SLI), 40 language-matched children, and 45 age-matched children found that errors in a set of morphemes marking tense characterized the SLI children. Evidence supporting the use of these morphemes as clinical markers for SLI is offered. (DB)

This study examined the speech of 54 young Spanish-speaking (Puerto Rican dialect) children with phonological disorders. It described the mean percentage-of-occurrence and standard deviation of phonological processes and the number and type of nontargeted process errors. Specific patterns characterizing the speech of these children were…